It’s no mystery that workers need time off once in a while to fully reconnect with their lives and recharge their batteries. It can even be a serious matter: work-related stress burnout has just recently been officially defined as a syndrome by the World Health Organization. When an employee does have the opportunity for a potential getaway, whether it’s driving to the Gulf of Mexico or jetting off to the French Riviera (depending on budget), they are often plagued with worry. Will you get paid for your time off? Will time away from the office hurt your standing in the company? If you use all your vacation days, how long before you can take another trip? Worse yet, will you have to tear yourself away from your Mai Tai every 15 minutes to check work emails?
Smart companies such as those on Comparably’s recent list of Best Companies for Work-Life Balance have long recognized the revitalized effectiveness a worker has upon returning from vacation. When given time to enjoy life and de-stress, they can attack their jobs with real passion. A sense of work-life balance is an increasingly important gauge of happiness and brings a potent boost on employee morale. So much so that a common perk for tech companies is to offer a more flexible work-from-home schedule and/or unlimited time off to workers — largely unthinkable to employers half a century ago. Given these facts, Comparably sought to understand the value work-life balance might play in recruiting and retaining talent in today’s modern workplace.
The following study revealed that a majority of workers report feeling burnout due to their work grind, and many of them don’t think they’ll be able to fully divorce themselves from work duties once they finally manage to get away. Most American workers get between two or three weeks off per year from their jobs, but it may not be enough. Many still report a desire for more flexibility, and work-life balance is a hugely important benefit.
Respondents were asked:
- Do you feel burnt out at work?
- How much paid vacation and sick days can you take a year?
- Does your boss expect you to work on vacation?
- How important is work life balance compared with other professional benefits?
- Other than Healthcare, which benefit is most important to you?
- Besides your salary, what’s most important to you about work?
The results:
Nearly half of all workers feel burnt out at work
44% of men and 46% of women feel burnt out at work and could probably use a vacation to recharge their batteries. Whether this points to a genuine surplus of work duties burning them out or simple human nature is unknown, but results are probably a mixture of both. (The averages below represent those who answered “no” to the question, “Do you feel burnt out at work?”)
Caucasians feel the most burnout, with 46% reporting feeling mentally fatigued or otherwise drained at work. African-American respondents (as well as the “Other” group) were in line with overall male responses on this question. Hispanic/Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders both reported feeling less burned out at work than the overall average for all employees.
Workers who have been on the job between 3 to 6 years report the most burnout, at 46%. The same is true of workers who have been on the job over 10 years. Conversely, entry-level employees feel the least amount of burnout – which only implies they haven’t worked quite long enough to get there.
With responses broken down by gender and department, we see that men report being less burnt out than their female counterparts in almost every case. Only female workers in Product and Sales report less burnout than their male coworkers. Of all groups, males in HR felt the least burnout, with only 30% reporting that sort of fatigue.
More than one-quarter of workers get 20-30 days of paid vacation or sick days per year
15-20 days was the second most common choice among respondents. And there are more workers who currently get unlimited time off than there are workers who get 10-15 or just 0-10 days.
For jobs outside of tech, 0-10 days off is the most common answer, with 20-30 days two points behind.
For jobs outside of tech, there’s an imbalance for men and women. More than a quarter of men report getting 20-30 days of paid vacation or sick days. The top choice for women was 0-10 days, the least attractive option.
Back in tech, when data is broken down by ethnicity, we see some disparities. While Caucasians and Asian/Pacific Islanders report getting the most common figure (20-30 days), Hispanic/Latino and African-American respondents reported getting just 15-20 days most often.
Most departments reported getting 20-30 days most often, in line with the national average. However, certain departments reported quirks. Design and Marketing report getting 12-20 days most often. Communications employees get 10-15 days most years. Admin, Customer Support, and Sales report getting 0-10 days most frequently.
Gen Z and young millennial workers report getting 15-20 days most often, while all other age groups report getting 20-30 days. This is probably due to the fact that the more experience one has, the more paid time off you acquire and earn.
One-quarter of entry level workers get just 0-10 days off per year. However, more than one-third of workers who have been at their jobs for more than ten years report getting 20-30 days off per year.
Nearly one-third say their boss bothers them with work while they’re on vacation.
Seventy percent of workers say the boss doesn’t expect them to work at all during their vacation. But that means 30 percent – almost one-third – can only expect to get so much peace of mind and freedom from work worries during their vacation time.
When segmented by ethnicities, the average for all employees hovers around 70% on this issue. Caucasians and Asian/Pacific Islanders expect to work on vacation just a bit more than the overall average for all workers, and African-Americans and Hispanic/Latinos expect it slightly less than that average. The “Other” grouping, which gathers responses from those who don’t identify with any one ethnicity, were most often expected to work while away on vacation.
Only one-quarter of employees in HR, Engineering, Customer Support, and Product say they expect to have to deal with work issues while on vacation. On the other hand, 40% of workers in the Business Development, Executive, and Legal departments admit that often the work never ends for them, even when on vacation.
As workers get older, the trend is that they’re less likely to be in a position where they are required to work while on vacation. More than 35% of Gen Z workers (aged 18-25) say that being on vacation does not stop the boss from contacting them. By the time workers have reached their mid-50s, nearly three-quarters say the boss wouldn’t expect work from them while on vacation.
In terms of major metros, workers in Seattle and Denver are generally free from having to work while enjoying their vacations. Workers in Minneapolis and Los Angeles are far more likely to have to put out fires at work while sipping a boat drink or relaxing under a mango tree.
In terms of a worker’s experience, the numbers barely waver from entry-level employees to those who had worked more than 10 years. Generally, as with the overall average, about 30% of employees do not expect their vacations to be free of work.
One third of workers say work-life balance is most important of all benefits
When all employees are asked which work benefit is most important to them, they chose work/life balance as most important. Only 3% surveyed said that benefit was least important. And only 8% said it was less important than Compensation.
While most departments chose work/life balance as most important, there were some deviations from that rule. Design, Business Development and Legal said it was their choice for second most important work benefit. And the executive branch chose “equal to other benefits” by four percentage points over “the most important.”
Gen Z employees ranked work/life balance second. Studieshave shown that, so far, this generation is not particularly concerned about whether or not their work lives take too much focus from their personal lives.
Workers in Denver, San Diego, and Seattle ranked work/life balance as only the second most important benefit.Employees from Minneapolis found that benefit of equal value to others.
For almost everyone, vacation days are second only to healthcare among benefits
For all employees surveyed, a company’s vacation policy was second only to their health benefits when asked which work benefit was most important to them. Flex time and 401k contribution were also often cited. The two benefits one would take advantage of while actually at work – office meals and childcare – were the least popular answers.
African-Americans chose 401k contribution and Asian/Pacific Islanders chose Flex Time. The other ethnicities – including Caucasians – chose vacation policy as the benefit they cared about most after healthcare.
Gen Z and Millennial employees chose vacation policy as the most important benefit after healthcare. This makes sense for an age group that still sees much travel in its near future. By the time workers are in their mid-30s, Flex Time has become their choice. And starting in the mid-40s, 401k contributions become of paramount importance, after healthcare, among benefits – probably since this age group is beginning to look at retirement.
After salary, work/life balance is most important for a majority of workers
Asked what was most important to them about their jobs beyond a paycheck, more than one-third of respondents chose work/life balance. Career advancement opportunities were a fairly distant second, with Culture, Health Benefits, and Company Mission bringing up a distant rear.
Men and women agree here about work/life balance being of high importance. Otherwise, men are more focused on Career Advancement Opportunities, and women are more concerned with Healthcare & Benefits.
Asian/Pacific Islanders chose career advancement opportunities as the most important factor of their jobs beyond salary. All other ethnicities chose work/life balance.
Work/life balance was also the top choice by employees in most cities – except tech cities San Diego and San Francisco, which chose the opportunity for career advancement. This may be due to a preponderance of younger tech workers in those cities.
Methodology
- Questions were in Yes/No and multiple-choice format. A total of six survey questions were included. Each survey was initiated between May 2018 through May 2019. Results are as of June 1, 2019. A total of 75,505 responses were used.
- Do you feel burnt out at work?
- How much paid vacation and sick days can you take a year?
- Does your boss expect you to work on your vacation?
- How important is work/life balance when compared to other benefits?
- Other than healthcare, which benefit is most important to you?
- Besides your salary, what’s most important to you about work?
- People of all ages, educational backgrounds, ethnicities and experience levels were included.
- Employees hail from small, mid-size, and large companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public) to household brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
About Comparably
Comparably is an online career destination for compensation and workplace culture data with a mission to make work dramatically more transparent and rewarding. Employees can anonymously and publicly rate their company culture and access salary data through the lens of specific demographics, including gender, ethnicity, age, location, years of experience, company size, title/department, and education. With the most comprehensive and structured data in the industry, it has accumulated 10 million ratings and hundreds of thousands of salary records by employees at 50,000 U.S. companies, from startups to Fortune 50 businesses. The company’s data-driven approach has quickly made it a trusted media resource for salary and workplace culture, and one of the fastest-growing SaaS solutions for employer branding. For more information, go to Comparably.com. For workplace culture and salary studies, including Comparably’s annual Best Places to Work and Best CEOs awards, go to Comparably.com/blog.
